The tough-talking newsman is the subject of an absorbing doc that relives thrilling highs but overlooks the murkier moments
Mike Wallace was the TV news reporter who became a household name in the US in the 60s as a correspondent with the CBS 60 Minutes programme, pioneering the tough on-camera interview. This documentary is an interesting if shapeless study of him, composed entirely of archive clips, which means his private life is opaque and also that Wallace’s off-camera ethnic slurs and questionable behaviour towards female colleagues go unmentioned.
We see him interviewing people – including a young
Donald Trump – and being interviewed, often by journalists self-consciously trying to turn the tables on Wallace and give him a diluted taste of his own medicine, the most vehement being Fox’s Bill O’Reilly. Fascinatingly, Wallace began as a jack-of-all-trades announcer, acting in radio drama serials, reading out sponsor messages and hosting gameshows; he was in some ways a rather Reaganesque figure in that he transplanted his performing style into the
Job he eventually got. If he’d gone into acting, I can imagine Wallace, like Leslie Nielsen, using his deadpan skills for
comedy.